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Custom "Text" view of all fonts

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 6:14 am
by aram535
Hi,

I often run into a situation where I want to see a word or text in various fonts to see which one works best. I can easily do this in Word (eww) via macros, but the fonts have to be installed, which is not good.

It would be a great addition, IMHO, if FontExpert could take a "sample text" and render it via all fonts, activated fonts, group, or worklist and present them in a view/PDF/etc.

This would allow easy access to see which font should be used or activated.

Since I'm asking, it would be important to be able to (in no particular order)
1) Use our own text as the rendered text
2) If in a view, I think it's important to be able to zoom in more than 100% to see detail/ligs.
3) Have almost the same functionality of DB search so that you can include/exclude fonts.

Thank you very much. Loving the tool.

Posted: Sat May 08, 2010 5:24 am
by admin
Have you tried to select "My Font Sample 1" or "My Font Sample 2" in the drop down combobox (on the Main view toolbar)? This feature displays custom text with all fonts. You can edit text displayed in "My Font Sample 1" and "My Font Sample 2" in Tools/Options/Main View.

Other ways to create font samples with custom text are:

1) Tools/Export to HTML...
This feature will create HTML web album with font sample images (e.g JPG) on a local disk.

2) Tools/Print Fonts...
You can also create PDF file If you have PDF virtual printer such as PDF995 (see pdf995.com).

Posted: Sat May 08, 2010 9:15 am
by aram535
Thank you for the reply. I have seen all three method, and I use these at the moment.

The functionality that I'm suggesting is slightly different and maybe even a combo of some of these.

I would like to be able to select 10 fonts (caslon, Minion, etc... ) or maybe a worklist.

Type in: "Bob's All American Subs" in 16pt, and get 1 sheet back that shows me the text in 16pt in the fonts that I had selected. Obviously there is a limit to the number of fonts that will fit, so other pages need to be used.

There is nothing wrong with the existing method, they're just very conducive to being able to do a quick compare, or EVEN show the client in a single quick view what font options they have. Right now I have to install the fonts, create a new document, create X copies of the "text" and assign each one to the font that is the option.

Does that help with what I'm suggesting? Would anyone else be interested in such a function?

Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 3:45 pm
by admin
With current functionality you can preview text formatted by selected fonts using Worklist + Main view or Worklist+Print Fonts/Layout report.
(Note, you do not need to install the fonts, FontExpert temporarily installs them automatically.)
I think your suggestion is similar to Print Fonts/Layout report, but the pages should be prepared in "two clicks". (Please correct me if needed.)
I will think about this feature, thank you for suggestion.

Posted: Fri May 14, 2010 6:31 am
by aram535
No, you're right that is the functionality that I was looking for. If I could ask that the font-size be included as an option there, that would be good.

Also some sort of zoom feature would also help, as at times I want to zoom in and view the details.

Thank you.